Budget Baloney

This week, President Barack Obama proposed “a budget that will create new jobs in manufacturing and energy and innovation and infrastructure, and we’ll pay for every dime of it by cutting unnecessary spending, closing wasteful tax loopholes!”

What? I must have fallen asleep and woken up in 2008. That could not be something he’d claim after five years in office — years after making similar claims and not delivering on them.

Does he think we have no memory, or that we’re just ignorant? Are these just poll-tested phrases that work because most voters are too busy to pay attention?

This one smug sentence alone is amazing in its confidence and deceit. Let’s break it down:

–“I will … create new jobs … ”

Politicians always say that, but this president says it especially often. Do voters not know that government has no money of its own, so when politicians “create” jobs, they take money from the private sector, the only group that creates real jobs?

I emphasize “real” because, of course, politicians can create jobs by funding companies like Solyndra, hiring more staff or paying people to dig holes and fill them up. But those jobs don’t last or create real wealth. Politicians can’t create real employment by taxing people and giving the money to others.

This post-recession economic recovery is the slowest ever. Usually, after a recession, the cost of labor drops, and companies rush to hire so they can profit as the economy improves.

This time, employers looked at a thousand new regulations, unknowable new rules and taxes coming from Obamacare, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the Labor Department and so on. They decided: “I better not try.”

May I hire interns to see if I like them before offering them long-term jobs? No. It may not be legal to employ interns anymore.

May I build a pipeline? Maybe. But the Environmental Protection Agency must approve. And state utilities. And state environmental officials. And the State Department. And the White House. And … who knows whom else?

We might get permission in a year, or three years, or five, or we may never be allowed to build. Maybe instead I’ll invest in a country where the rules are predictable and understandable.

–The president says he will “create new jobs in manufacturing … ”

Manufacturing? Don’t voters know that service jobs are just as real and good? Creating software, movies and medical innovation is just as valuable as manufacturing and often more comfortable for workers. Most parents want their kids to get jobs in offices or medical centers rather than mines or factories.

–The president also says he will “create new jobs in … energy … ”

Don’t people remember Solar One, Solyndra, Evergreen Solar, etc., and the billions lost? That the private sector is better at developing new forms of energy than politicians? That the boom in cleaner, cheaper natural gas came in spite of politicians, not because of them?

–The president says he will “create jobs in … infrastructure … ”

Did voters already forget that the last “shovel-ready” jobs didn’t materialize? That billions went to politicians’ cronies?

–The president will pay for his new spending “by cutting unnecessary spending … ”

Give me a break. The president has had five years, two of which he was supported by a Democratic Congress, to cut “unnecessary spending.”

Even today’s proposed shrinking of the size of the military to pre-World War II levels (which probably won’t happen) isn’t a cut. Obama’s new budget proposesincreasing Pentagon funds by $28 billion.

–The president even backed off from his earlier commitment to use more realistic cost-of-living adjustments when calculating Social Security payments.

–Most annoying, the president brags that he has “reduced the deficit at the fastest rate in 60 years.”

But that’s only if compared to his and former President George W. Bush’s blowout stimulus of 2008. Much of the deficit reduction came from spending cuts (sequestration), which the president himself opposed, forced by Republicans. And his 2015 budget proposes $56 billion more spending than he and Congress had agreed to earlier.

Our debt will soon explode because baby boomers are about to retire. On this track, we are doomed.

Quotes & Notes

"Terrorism flourishes because they are protected by a Left-wing denial industry" . --- author unknown

"Facts are rarely allowed to contaminate the big-government utopian delusion of the Left" -- author unknown

"Without double standards, the Left/Statists/Liberals would have no standards at all" -- author unknown

"The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight!" -- Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) Economist and social philosopher

"And what is Fascism? Fascism is private ownership, private enterprise, but total government control and regulation. Well, isn’t this the liberal philosophy?

Liberals value theory over truth and facts

The conservative, so-called, is the one that says ‘less government, get off my back, get out of my pocket, and let me have more control of my own destiny.'" -Ronald Reagan

"Liberals sense of moral righteousness doesn't come from achievement - it comes from believing that you are a bad person... for a Liberal to be morally superior, they must paint Conservatives as morally inferior, even if they have to lie. It's an unearned sense of moral superiority."

"The left no longer makes arguments about policies' effectiveness. Their only argument is character assassination"

"The religion of Leftism supersedes the law, fairness or personal integrity."

"...liberals are big fans of freedom speech, freedom of expression, freedom of anything and everything - unless, of course, they disagree with whatever the “anything or everything” is." - Adam Corolla

"I have never understood why it is 'greed' to want to keep money you've earned, but not greed to want to take someone else's money". - Thomas Sowell

"Have I not destroyed my enemy when I have made him into my friend?" -Abraham Lincoln

"The most intolerant people I've ever met are those Liberals who consider themselves most tolerant." -MB

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

"Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so." -Ronald Reagan

"The problem with Socialism (Liberalism) is that eventually, you run out of other peoples money" - Margaret Thatcher

"If you think criminals and lunatics are going to obey gun control laws, you're a special kind of stupid" -MB

"One thing you have to say about the Left: They never miss an opportunity to let the mask of hatred slip. It’s practically Pavlovian; they are so invested in the myth of their own righteousness that their “tolerance” fetish goes right out the window whenever they suffer the slightest affront to their delusional notion of how the world works." - Michael Walsh